PATTI SMITH: DREAM OF LIFE (2008) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Steven Sebring
First, a disclaimer. I'm not the least bit objective when it comes to Patti Smith. She's my favorite rock-&-roll artist ever, apart from the Grateful Dead, plus she's got something going for her the Dead mostly didn't: She's hot. To make this movie, Steven Sebring followed Smith around for something like 10 years, on stage and away from it, traipsing around the world, or just hanging out in a corner of her house in Manhattan. The result is a cinematic scrapbook, a kind of home movie/art film made with the more or less active participation of its subject. Smith herself is a shape shifter, awkward and self-deprecating, thoughtful and reflective, fierce and defiant, as the moment demands. There's an element of performance in everything she does, at least when there's a camera around, but the performance never seems pretentious. It's just who she is. Like some other musical artists - Pete Seeger and Neil Young would be two more - Smith's on a mission that goes way beyond touring and recording albums. She truly believes, not only that the world can change for the better, but that it has to, and she sees her art as a mechanism that can help bring that about. That's not a bad dream to live by, and Smith, now in her 60s, shows no outward signs of slowing down or backing off. In the process, she's becoming a cool old lady. Which means that the rest of us, cool or not, are getting older, too.
